Being a Male Model, May 2012, Marie Claire - Amy Fallon
Being a Male Model, May 2012, Marie Claire - Amy Fallon
Being a Male Model, May 2012, Marie Claire - Amy Fallon
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WALK LIKE<br />
A MAN<br />
From top<br />
David Gandy<br />
attends Dolce<br />
& Gabbana’s<br />
Autumn/Winter<br />
<strong>2012</strong> menswear<br />
runway show;<br />
Gavin James<br />
Bower walks for<br />
John Galliano;<br />
Marcus<br />
Schenkenberg at<br />
a charity fashion<br />
show in New York<br />
City in 2009.<br />
been a ‘pilot, a business man, a surfer dude and the shy<br />
boy next door’ during assignments. ‘Highlights include<br />
walking the Great Wall of China, eating Peking duck<br />
in Beijing, shooting on beaches in the Greek Islands,<br />
snorkelling in Mauritius, playing football with the<br />
locals in Zanzibar and walking the<br />
streets of Barcelona,’ Botha tells<br />
<strong>Marie</strong> <strong>Claire</strong>.<br />
‘There’s no typical day in<br />
a model’s life.’ But for all the<br />
spontaneity and glamour, it really<br />
involves a lot of hard grind, he<br />
insists. ‘You can’t plan anything! It’s<br />
like being a doctor – you are always<br />
on standby,’ says Botha. ‘Working on<br />
Sundays and holidays when your<br />
friends are off work sucks. Missing your loved ones’<br />
birthdays is another downside.’<br />
One of the few male models who can command<br />
rates to rival some of his fellow females is 32-yearold<br />
UK model David Gandy. But he knows all about<br />
dedication to the job, as he demonstrates with his<br />
six-pack in Dolce & Gabbana’s Light Blue ad. <strong>Male</strong><br />
models are generally considered to have a longer<br />
career span than women (Gandy believes<br />
that male models usually get better with<br />
age), and being in shape could mean a<br />
couple of years of extra work.<br />
‘I do work hugely at my physical fitness,’<br />
Gandy told the UK’s Telegraph in 2010. ‘As<br />
for food, I have to watch that too. When I’m<br />
doing a shoot I cut out all carbohydrates for a<br />
month beforehand, work out every day and<br />
drink protein shakes day and night.’<br />
Of course, the game has changed a lot<br />
since the days of ‘The Incredible Hulse’,<br />
and even since Gandy won a modelling<br />
competition in 2002. Once being a<br />
clotheshorse for a designer label or the face<br />
of an aftershave campaign was one big party.<br />
Today it’s a competitive trade.<br />
<strong>Male</strong> models<br />
are generally<br />
considered to<br />
have a longer<br />
career span<br />
‘Initially it was all about looks and body,’ says Andrea Baptista,<br />
who has worked in the field for 15 years and is the managing<br />
director of Cape Town’s D&A <strong>Model</strong> Management. D&A regularly<br />
scouts for boys taller than 1,82 metres and older than 20, but it takes<br />
more than that to be the next Taylor Fuchs (a successful Canadian<br />
model). ‘Nowadays personality, charm and acting ability are all<br />
prerequisites, especially in South Africa,’ says Baptista, who<br />
represents Men’s Health favourite Wiehahn Stiglingh, among<br />
others. ‘The competition is high, so if you have a bad attitude the<br />
chances are that you will not work.’ Hear that lads? A tantrum<br />
à la Naomi Campbell won’t get you anywhere.<br />
Some haven’t heeded this warning. Baptista tells <strong>Marie</strong> <strong>Claire</strong><br />
she’s lucky to have worked with the ‘most amazing models’, but<br />
there have been whispers about male models being banned from<br />
a local hairdresser as they were ‘too difficult to please’. One bloke<br />
wanted to have a ‘serious meeting’ with a booker, but it turned<br />
out all he wanted was to work on a ‘new smile’ after shaving off<br />
his tiny stubble. ‘Certain male models can be 100 times more of<br />
a prima donna than a female model,’ says<br />
Baptista. ‘As agents, we don’t kill the goose<br />
that is laying the golden eggs. But we guide<br />
and facilitate ways to change behaviour and<br />
attitude. <strong>Model</strong>s have to be good to their<br />
bookers; top bookers can’t be bribed to put<br />
up with jerks.’<br />
Botha agrees that the field can be<br />
incredibly competitive. ‘If you have ever<br />
walked in on a request casting, it looks like<br />
the mafia sitting there. A couple of hundred<br />
boys sitting there with dark brown hair, brown eyes, tanned skin.’<br />
f<br />
or a good example of how tricky the industry can be,<br />
look no further than British model-turned-author Gavin<br />
James Bower. An inspiring writer, Bower (yes, he has dark<br />
brown hair) applied for a two-week internship at UK fashion<br />
title Dazed and Confused when he was 21. He never expected<br />
to end up being featured as a model in the publication. During<br />
his two years in the industry, Bower was less surprised to learn<br />
that drugs are ‘as ten a penny as Champagne’ in this line of<br />
work and that underwear models were selected on ‘how gay the<br />
casting agent or photographer was’, and he was more surprised to<br />
discover that male models can read. Oh, and that although it’s<br />
‘not an easy thing to admit to’, male models carry concealer.<br />
Bower’s first shoot involved a ‘cigarette, a schoolboy outfit<br />
and a rugby ball, and not in a good way’. It was a ‘profoundly<br />
alienating experience’ that paid only R895. ‘The photographer<br />
kept shouting “more meat!” I gave him more, well… meat,’ Bower,<br />
now 29, tells <strong>Marie</strong> <strong>Claire</strong>. ‘There’s a powerlessness to it. It’s<br />
certainly unnerving – to hover over yourself, watching a<br />
version of you performing to sell stuff you can’t actually afford,<br />
but which looks perfect. The irony was not lost on me.’<br />
Like Botha and many others, Bower had thought that selling<br />
his looks might be a good way of making money before getting<br />
a ‘proper job’ – Gandy admits there’s still a stigma attached to<br />
54 may <strong>2012</strong> marieclaire.co.za<br />
ADDITIONAL TEXT LAURA TWIGGS PHOTOGRAPHS GALLO IMAGES/GETTY IMAGES, PICTURENET, PAN MEDIA AND JESSE-LEIGH ELFORD/COSMOPOLITAN<br />
male modelling. He was shocked when his lifestyle ended up<br />
resembling that of his skint university mates. There were the OTT<br />
times, of course: ‘I once got paid €1 000 (R9 968) to sit around<br />
having make-up applied,’ Bower says. He even recalls having two<br />
stylists at a Hermès show. ‘One helped me in and out of the<br />
clothing. The other made sure I didn’t nick anything,’ Bower says.<br />
‘But most of the time, the work isn’t there or, if it is, it’s badly<br />
paid,’ – though there are ‘loads of freebies’ like jeans and trainers.<br />
Business and financial magazine Forbes points out that male<br />
models, unlike Gisele Bündchen and Heidi Klum, rumoured to<br />
earn around R340 million and R150 million a year respectively,<br />
don’t host TV shows. Nor are they the brand ambassadors for<br />
multibillion-dollar lingerie companies. ‘It’s the only industry in<br />
the world where women make more than men,’ John W. Babin,<br />
co-director of the men’s division at Red <strong>Model</strong> Management,<br />
told the magazine in 2008. It’s now considered common<br />
knowledge that female models command two to three times the<br />
rate of their male counterparts, for the same work.<br />
Even Swedish beefcake Marcus Schenkenberg, the first<br />
honoree to be inducted into the <strong>Male</strong> <strong>Model</strong> Hall of Fame and<br />
the first to ever grace a magazine cover, told Teaser magazine,<br />
‘The saying “sex sells” is true, and in that women per se have the<br />
advantage over men.’<br />
This may be the reason Pejic chooses to be a lady in many of<br />
his shoots, commanding women’s fees. It seems to have worked;<br />
he’s been swamped with requests for everything from acting<br />
roles to a reality show and his own nail-polish brand. ‘He’s got<br />
the best of both worlds and it’s a bonus for him,’ says Botha.<br />
‘The money [in the industry] is good, but not what it used to be.’<br />
Still, who would have passed up the opportunity to walk for<br />
John Galliano in his 2005 Spring/Summer Paris show? Bower<br />
says walking for the disgraced designer, once Dior’s golden boy,<br />
was the most surreal moment of his modelling career. ‘Getting<br />
naked in front of giggling Japanese stylists and fashionistas<br />
who were backstage for the express purpose of perving on<br />
models getting naked was weird,’ he says. ‘[And] there was<br />
Galliano in a pink suit standing by the entrance to the catwalk<br />
and saying I looked great. I bet he says that to all the boys.’<br />
It doesn’t get much bigger than Galliano. Or at least it<br />
didn’t for Bower. Twelve months later he wasn’t modeling at all,<br />
having been turned down for an aftershave shoot in the<br />
Caribbean. He then pursued a career in TV, then publishing<br />
Dazed and Aroused, a semi-autobiographical novel about the<br />
modelling industry, a move that seems de rigueur (or perhaps<br />
a career necessity) for any former male model.<br />
Hulse, who now only gets about two bookings a month,<br />
published Sex, Love and Fashion: A Memoir of a <strong>Male</strong> <strong>Model</strong> in<br />
2008. ‘I don’t care how good-looking you are… The castle’s made<br />
of sand,’ he says.<br />
Botha, who finished his degree through UNISA a year after<br />
becoming a model, is continuing to ‘ride the wave’ for as long<br />
as possible, but is also ‘putting things in place for when beauty<br />
becomes the beast. The secret is treating it as a business and<br />
being thankful for every job… It could be your last,’ he says.<br />
than women 2<br />
1<br />
3<br />
1<br />
international report<br />
Top international earners<br />
According to the UK’s Telegraph<br />
1. GABRIEL AUBRY<br />
From Montreal, Canada<br />
Born 1976<br />
Claim to fame Face of Versace<br />
2. DAVID GANDY<br />
From Essex, UK<br />
Born 1980<br />
Claim to fame Favourite of<br />
Dolce & Gabbana<br />
3. LARS BURMEISTER<br />
From Sonneberg, Germany<br />
Born 1981<br />
Claim to fame Face of Giorgio<br />
Armani Acqua di Giò<br />
4. NOAH MILLS<br />
From Maryland, United States<br />
Born 1985<br />
Claim to fame Starred in Sex<br />
and the City 2, and is a regular<br />
for Dolce & Gabbana and<br />
Tommy Hilfiger<br />
5. MARK VANDERLOO<br />
From Waddinxveen, Holland<br />
Born 1968<br />
Claim to fame Face of<br />
Hugo Boss<br />
Local favourites<br />
Some of SA’s home-grown honeys…<br />
1. JANEZ VERMEIREN<br />
Born 1978<br />
You’ll know him as the DIY<br />
handyman on SABC3’s Top Billing<br />
and a Top Travel presenter<br />
2. SHAUN DE WET<br />
Born 1982<br />
You’ll know him as the face<br />
(and body) of Calvin Klein’s<br />
Truth fragrance<br />
3. JUSTIN HOPWOOD<br />
Born 1992<br />
You’ll know him as the face of<br />
brands such as Abercrombie &<br />
Fitch and Nautica and from dozens<br />
of fashion magazines<br />
55